(5)

Many of the currently practiced and recently developed forms of body psychotherapy are in some manner or another indebted to Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). He took Sigmund Freud’s argument that our psychic life is rooted in our bodies seriously, developed a psychoanalytic method that observed the body’s expression and finally endorsed bodywork as a therapeutic tool (Välimäki et Saksa 2006; Young 2010). Nowadays Reichian work includes many different approaches, as Reich himself worked in different ways during different phases of his career.